Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/215



the exception of the ubiquitous House Sparrow, no birds frequenting our London parks and trees are so familiar to us as our black-coated friends the Rooks, or, as they are commonly but erroneously called, Crows. Winter and spring, summer and autumn, they may be seen stalking about searching for food, confident in their security, claiming friendship with man, yet wary withal, for they never allow too near an approach. Never disturbed by crow-boy or gun, their progeny protected and allowed to gain maturity, no rook-shooting parties to molest them, they are happy in the dust and turmoil of this overgrown city.

The Rook, indeed, is to the citizen what the Nightingale is to the countryman—the harbinger of spring; and there are few pleasanter sounds in nature than the harmonious cawing from the lofty elm which greets the ear at Eastertide. We never pass beneath a Rookery in early spring, or listen to the distant voices of our sable friends without being reminded of Longfellow's lines in 'The Birds of Killingworth':— Rh